Palo Alto Net­works, the next-gen­er­a­tion se­cu­rity com­pany, an­nounced that it is for­mal­iz­ing its co­op­er­a­tion with the IN­TER­POL Global Com­plex for In­no­va­tion (IGCI). Palo Alto Net­works is the first cy­ber se­cu­rity com­pany to sign a Data Ex­change Agree­ment (DEA) with IN­TER­POL.

This agree­ment aims to com­bat crim­i­nal trends in cy­berspace, cy­ber threats and cy­ber crime glob­ally through shar­ing threat in­for­ma­tion gen­er­ated by Palo Alto Net­works and Unit 42, its threat in­tel­li­gence team. Palo Alto Net­works will be in­volved in the op­er­a­tional brief­ings at IN­TER­POL and vice versa. A threat in­tel­li­gence ex­pert from Unit 42 will be as­signed to col­lab­o­rate with the IGCI, help­ing pro­vide a clearer un­der­stand­ing of the cur­rent land­scape, which can equip law en­force­ment of­fi­cers with pow­er­ful in­for­ma­tion needed to pre­vent suc­cess­ful cy­ber at­tacks.

While the agree­ment for­mal­izes the co­op­er­a­tion be­tween Palo Alto Net­works and IN­TER­POL, both par­ties have long been in col­lab­o­ra­tion. Early this year, Palo Alto Net­works was one of seven pri­vate sec­tor com­pa­nies that pro­vided support to an IN­TER­POL-led op­er­a­tion tar­get­ing cy­ber­crime across the ASEAN re­gion, re­sult­ing in the iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of nearly 9,000 com­mand-and-con­trol (C2) servers as well as hun­dreds of com­pro­mised web­sites, in­clud­ing gov­ern­ment portals.